Naval EC should not become another version of standard Naval Battles

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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434

I’ve played this game for over a decade and have lived through dozens of ordinance nerfs from when I first joined in update 1.51. But go ahead and assume I’m talking shit, I won’t stop you.

See I actually DON’T want aircraft to “club tanks or boats or ships” all day long, because I do in fact recognize that such things are bad for long-term game health.

However, I also choose to ignore the “one plane, one tank/boat/ship, open field/water, CAS OP!” circlejerk argument that has unilaterally prevented the bulk of the community from looking at CAS implementation objectively.

What I see is plainly simple: Planes have no real purpose other than dunking on random people, even though they very much had one on real battlefields, AND the game has the physical assets to go make said objectives if it so wants to.

But because nobody seems to recognize that, most people argue for “buff this, nerf that” and that’s it.

Sounds like a good idea.

Problem is other than the AI-controlled Cargo Ships and select low tier DDs, AI gunners are cracked beyond all sense of reality.

Unless you’re talking specifically about AI-controlled highly-detailed Landing Craft from WWM, the AI-controlled AAA fire from PT boats is MUCH WORSE than corresponding Bluewater stuff of the same BR range.

So what can CAS perform besides scouting that DOESN’T involve running headfirst into a wall of AI-controlled AAA? If a player mans his guns himself and nails me, so be it. But if I spot someone busy in a gunfight who is currently shredding my team, I dive towards him with a throttled-back engine to minimize my noise, and he’s tunnel-visioned in his gunfight, why should my plane be swatted down by aimbots attached to his hull?

What kind of other objectives can CAS perform that AREN’T about bombing ships? Until AI gunners get utterly deleted, there’s hardly any point barring maybe guided ordinance like the Fritz X.

435

The bots specifically seem to mimick “AB players” regardless of the actual game mode they’re in. You guys claim “AI gunners were nerfed,” but if the named bots are behaving identically to AB regardless of mode, that would explain why I see no difference if its one of those named bots opening up on me.

436

Only server-bots’s ai is cracked beyond all sense of reality as they prefer firing MAIN GUNS at your planes, lol.

Player-controlled “bots” (when you sit in a hydroplane, your main ship is controlled by a bot) are not that crazy. Thus, this is another reason to make a good Carrier group pseudo-RTS mode where every bot is controlled by players and players can switch between them.

You can drop deep mines and torpedoes at enemy subs, anyway, that sounds cool. Also you can drop torpedoes at enemy ships, especially if gaijin will add them their real guidance. Because in such a mode it won’t be OP at all, players have like 10+ ships in their control.

437

Being a veteran =/= knowing what you’re talking about. I played Warthunder back when the Maus was top tier and Shermans were commonly clubbed by both tiger 1s and 2s.

I was here when the M3 75mm GMC was first added as well. Not that this account proves that.

Go fight a Pr23 Sovetsky Soyuz in anything that isn’t another Pr23. I’ll wait.

Thus, CAS is god damn annoying and they deserve nothing aside from getting erased from the sky for being as such. Is it OP? No.

Almost like it’s a video game. Hmmmmm.

438

It’s a view of very unexperienced player. In fact planes give you opportunity to turn the tide of the battle, prevent enemy from caps, demolish good player if he is no paying attention. AI controlled AA only frightens and kill bad players who don’t know what they doing, and you want to nerf it even more.

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439

Drop mines at subs, drop torpedoes at enemy ships, drop mines at some straights where enemy ships may cross, recon enemies with a feature, engage with enemy planes.

With a carrier group mode all these activities will be available since like first second of a match as there will always be 3-5 subs, multiple smaller ships controlled by enemies, enemy planes spawned for free on their carriers, etc. etc…

Recon, place mines, engage with planes, drop charges on subs. Many activities there will be…

I should really write a suggestion already… I’m just lazy because I don’t want to photoshop many images, but there should be like, dozens of images for clarity…

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440

Last I checked though no aerial torpedoes on any planes we have ingame are guided in any capacity.

In my observation weirdly enough the un-named “Destroyer” and “Light/Heavy Cruiser” bots are actually worse than the named ones. Though both are opening fire with main guns at any incoming planes from absurd distances.

If you’re using a plane that isn’t insanely maneuverable to deliver torpedoes which have limited range well within the lethal envelope of the flak…how exactly are you supposed to not die or not be crippled?

I am nowhere near BB tier, but I have seen enough YT personalities ranting about “of course a battleship built in 2026 beats a battleship built in 1942” to know exactly what you’re talking about. Gaijin intentionally modeled the Soyuz to suit the existing meta, even by totally ignoring reality and physics.

What it deserves is an actual purpose where it HELPS its teammates.

Except buffs and nerfs don’t solve problems with structure of objectives, spawn conditions, and game mechanics. They’re pretty much incapable of solving any of those. No different than the corresponding “CAS vs Tank pissing war” over in “Ground.”

441

I don’t trust YouTube personalities to know what they’re talking about in a mode they hardly play.

It’s called ship launched floatplanes. Use 'em.

They even the playing field at least, which is the main problem with naval right now aside from straight up non existent map design barring palau islands.

There’s at least a dozen ships in dire need of a buff, and others either need a nerf or BR bump (HMS York.)

Edit

Shameless plug that needs to be updated: Proposal for Bluewater Naval Changes

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442

A game all about being aware of your surroundings should not have AI-controlled anything be commonly able to kill players when the company making the game has proven themselves incapable of making AI that’s neither overpowered nor useless. Look at the years-long argument on bomber gunners - Gaijin never truly “fixed” them, they just made AI gunners so comically bad that players were forced to use them manually to get kills more than once in a blue moon.

All I think is “well why have AI gunners at all at that point?” I see the exact same underlying gameplay mechanic problem playing out with AI gunners on ships.

As soon as you get past low tier DDs, more and more ships get HE-VT rounds on their main guns and radars to aim them with well beyond the stated ranges of aerial torpedoes that are generally 2-4km depending on model.

Yes, I understand this, and this definitely helps the spawn side of the equation and the “if you don’t like X, spawn Y to counter X” that the current SP system gets in the way of.

Okay, recon I get, we have that with tanks and drones. Mines currently despawn after just 5 minutes so unless you make those stick around until destroyed, mine-laying will at best be a curiosity restricted to a single premium PT boat.

Specifically I used to watch Napalmratte a lot, and I enjoyed his Naval videos because he was seemingly the only major one who covered naval all that often.

That just sounds like scouting with drones, essentially. Currently maps are all flat so there is no horizon to see over using scout planes.

Depends on what metric you mean by “evening the playing field.”

Massive BR decompression to break up the “you will club or be clubbed” matchmaking is obvious.

I also wholeheartedly agree Naval map design is terrible, and for all the open sea circle maps, functionally nonexistent. There was one map for [Encounter] (or whatever the mode name is where each team has Cargo Ships to protect) which had a bunch of northern tall cliffs or fjords that enabled weaker vessels to easily sneak around the view of larger ships to torpedo-kill the Cargo Ships an their escort bots. But the name escapes me.

But specifically on the “Ship vs CAS” aspect or “PT vs Ship” aspect, things are currently slanted the exact opposite way from reality. Dumb game mechanics make surprising player ships impossible. Named bots behave like its AB in all modes. Un-named bots are even more comically stupid in how long range they open fire at. A history of overkill CAS nerfs to appease tankers has had collateral damage to the functionality of ordinance vs ships, because the weapon files are shared between game modes. The compartment-based, crew-count-pseudo-HP damage model system we have systematically under-models flooding being what sunk ships and makes most fights far more drawn out slugfests than many actually were, especially regarding relatively small aerial torpedoes. And mind you these are things me as a fairly rusty Naval player has been reminded of recently. So there are surely many more problems in higher ranks I haven’t seen.

Good thread btw.

443

Laying smoke screens, spotting pt boats behind islands and being able to decap or challenge other floatplanes. That alone is a huge advantage over any ship that doesn’t use them.

Then you’re playing the wrong game. Warthunder has never been realistic and it’s obvious Gaijin has been walking farther away from historical accuracy and realism for over a decade at this point.

Giving ships that are straight garbage a much needed buff, for one. The Omahas are borderline worthless despite the countless guns. Krasny Krym does the same thing but better.

Conversely, most BBs are either painfully mid in comparison to the few exemplars or balanced so poorly they’re borderline unusable (Roma, Italia)

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444

Fair enough, I don’t believe any plane ingame is able to lay smoke screens, but yes that would be quite nice as an option.

It can only unlock its true potential by peeling back all the idiotic “balans” nerfing from over the years. At least that’s what my brain has settled upon.

Their BR system clearly CAN work, but if you feed it unrealistic inputs, it spits out liquefied dogshit, which unsurprisingly people are repulsed by.

Fair enough, I have yet to play either of those, so I will have to take your word for it. Though I have jokingly heard the latter referred to as the “Krispy Kreme” of food for late cruisers and early BC/BBs.

This I have no direct experience with but I have watched a ton of Napalm’s videos on, so I more or less know what you’re talking about here.

445

Except that the problem is in you. You don’t want to learn how to avoid being hit by AA. So your suggestion is diminish 1000+ crew ships defense to your level of skill, so you could attack them without a treat, flying strait.

Which doesn’t solve problem only switch meta ships. Another unexperienced mistake.

Impossible for you, cause you don’t want to learn.

It’s in game on all ships floatplanes.

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446

All ship based floatplanes are capable of laying smoke in warthunder.

The easiest way to kill one is hammer just in front of the stern to mag detonate it with SAP. If you have AP you can just choose boilers or magazines between 'em to blow them out of the water.

Comparatively, you just aim at or just above waterline on an omaha below the bridge and either fatally or near fatally flood it with a shellroom detonation or instantly mag detonate it. Wouldn’t be surprised if 20.3cm HE could do it too.

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447

You run out of logic and resort to personal attacks, shocking…

Just because you adapted to a terrible system doesn’t make that system good.

It will space the truly monstrous vessels well apart from all the others if nothing else. If certain vessels are unbalanceable, you have them match against each other and kill each other day in, day out.

Huh, well this is news to me - I wonder why planes you spawn with SP don’t have this option, given its presumably just a form of ordinance.

Good to know when I meet both.

448

It’s a fair system. You just don’t want to learn it.

They are like that cause of bugs like this Naval shells have diminished fragmentation penetration or Is something changed or wrong with naval and underwater shells? - #7 by Kweedko which strengthens strong ships and weakens weak ones , not cause of BRs.

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449

I just took a look here and truthfully I am surprised by that. I wonder what on earth the explanation for that is. Do naval shells break something if they have the same corresponding fragmentation penetration levels as air or tank rounds?

I’ve experienced this one personally. I see where the ammo is in the X-ray hit-cam but when I try to aim there it almost never works.

No it is anything but “fair.” It is “revenge” for the equally-bad implementation of CAS in other game modes that you want to keep because you’re angry about those other modes.

450

It’s a good implementation, single plane must fear of big ship, especially if he dive on low altitude or flying strait lines without avoiding shells. And counterplay is simple, maneuver and don’t be stupid or suicidal.

good example how to do it properly
https://www.reddit.com/r/WarThunderNaval/comments/1wfe969/naval_cas_is_my_jam/

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451

Well, Gaijin is quiet.
Thank you for this bro’s ; You know how to keep players.
That was a pleasure to play old naval EC and met good players in.
Had good memories in, but a page turned.

Now, i’m gonna stop playing EC and WT thanks to you.
I’ll farm the next new ships in naval regular for my collection and once i’ll have them, i’ll stop playing again.

Since the naval EC update, I played for testing and since, I didn’t touched navy.

Thank you so much gaijin. Thank you.

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452

Nah, you will come back in a week.

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453

Really ? No. Maybe for event vehicle in regular battle, but not in EC.
EC is bad now.
There is no point playing it.

I play some tank match but i’m not touching naval anymore.
But now i’m playing other games.

They lose one naval player.

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